


The Significance of Touch

by Write_as_Rain



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Implied/Referenced Canon-Typical Self-Mutilation, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Mild Touch Starvation, Sasha has So Many Dads, Sasha thinks her usefulness is her worth, Sasha's Terrible Childhood, Spoilers up to the Roman Rogues sidequest, because Barret is a terrible man, my Sasha is ace and gray-aro. it's not relevant to the plot I just think you ought to know, no beta we die like bertie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-14 20:48:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29052390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Write_as_Rain/pseuds/Write_as_Rain
Summary: Sasha is used to being seen as a tool.A series of moments throughout Sasha's life.Or5 times people tried to tell Sasha they loved her, +1 time she realized it.
Relationships: Bi Ming Gusset & Sasha Racket, Brock & Sasha Racket, Grizzop drik Acht Amsterdam & Sasha Racket, Sasha Racket & The Roman Rogues, Sasha Racket & Zolf Smith
Comments: 5
Kudos: 39





	The Significance of Touch

**Author's Note:**

> Ft. ace Sasha who's a little bit touch-starved because it’s Projection Hours.

Sasha didn’t like to be touched.

Well, not exactly that. She imagined, in theory, physical contact might not be totally awful. Only, people never warned her before springing it on her, and Sasha was not the kind of person things were sprung on. She liked to be the one doing the springing, thanks very much.

Besides, growing up the way she had, being touched wasn’t often a good thing. Barret wielded it like a weapon, never laid a hand on her _except_ to hurt, to force her to do what he wanted. The other kids in his gang—and even the grownups, sometimes—always bigger and stronger than her… they loved to beat her down and steal what they could from her. Clawing for recognition from the boss.

Once when she was a kid, returning frustrated and footsore from a mildly-successful day of picking pockets, Ashen and a pair of his friends ambushed her. Left her with nothing to take back to Barret but a bloodied nose. He was… unsympathetic.

 _Once._ Sasha had never let it happen again. She wised up, learned how to move, using her small size and dodginess to her advantage. Learned how to hit back. With _knives_.

Oh yeah, she learned, all right. To keep what was hers, she could not let others get close. Touch was not to be trusted.

—

“Scarper!” came Brock’s voice in a whisper-shout.

Sasha’s thieves’ tools were up her sleeves in a blink. She gritted her teeth, wanting to kick the stupid safe. It wasn’t supposed to be this difficult, she was getting really good at lockpicking, but this one had something in it counteracting each move _as_ she made it. If she just had more time, another _minute,_ maybe—

“ _Sasha,”_ Brock whispered, urgently.

With a quiet, frustrated growl, she retreated to the window, where Brock was kneeling on the sill with his hands laced together. He boosted her up to the rooftop and she clambered easily over the edge, flipping over into a crouch, dangling her arms down after him.

Brock’s hands wrapped around hers, the skin cool and rough and a little damp from sweat and Sasha’s boots. Through the hum of adrenaline, she could barely feel the typical, near-painful crawling zing of skin-to-skin contact. She strained to pull him up over the side of the roof, his scrabbling feet trying and failing to catch on the bricks.

Though a few years older than her, Brock wasn’t heavy; being an Other London kid meant he was shrunken for his age and not likely to get much bigger. Being Barret’s family hadn’t sheltered either of them from that. It might have even made it worse, come to think of it….

Sasha might have been small and scrawny, looking more like a nine-year-old than the teenager she was—which she didn’t really mind; it made getting in and out of places well easy. But she could be strong, too.

Using her legs and leverage, she leaned back and, with a grunt, heaved Brock’s upper half over the edge of the roof. He got one leg under him, scrambled up, and bolted off, Sasha close on his heels.

They skimmed the rooftops, experience telling Sasha where to trust her weight and where not to. Over her heart and breath, she didn’t hear any telltale signs of pursuit—no shouting, no dogs. They flew across what felt like half of Other London, steadily back towards Racket territory.

Brock leapt over a narrow alley, the one across from Butcher Jones’. A hundred times she’d made this same jump and not once had a problem. By fluke, this time, her leading foot hit a slimy patch of moss. Her legs flew out from under her, and she fell backward, already bracing for the good 15-foot drop flat on her back that was right behind her heels—

Brock’s hand shot out and gripped her forearm, hot as a brand on her underground-cool skin, her whole body lighting up from the contact.

“Careful!” he hissed, half laughing, but with fear in his eyes.

She got her feet back under her, taking a shuddering breath. “Yeah, cheers, mate.”

He steadied her, giving her arm a solid squeeze before letting go. Sasha felt like if she looked at it, she’d see his handprint wrapped around her forearm in red like an acid burn. She didn’t look down. She tugged the grimy sleeve of her coat down further over her wrist.

Climbing cautiously off the roof and continuing through the narrow streets, they headed by tacit agreement to one of their favourite haunts: half a bridge jutting out into the open air, which boasted a wide view of the surfacemost Racket floor. On the way, Brock used the last of his pocket change to buy an eel in a bun to split. It must’ve been raining, above, because more water than usual was dribbling in slick rivulets down the walls, and the Thames wasn’t running as sluggish.

Sasha sat on the wide stone railing, hugging her knees and trying to ignore the tingling still under her skin. She didn’t know when her “letting people touch me is bad” thing had turned into “people touching me actually feels weird,” but at some point, it had.

Brock’s fingers, covered in mustard and proffering half an eel in a bun, crept into view.

She exhaled through her nose, neither a laugh nor a sigh, and plucked it out of his hand, careful not to brush fingers.

They ate in disappointed silence.

“Look, we’ll just have to tell Barret it was a bad job and we got nothin’ for ’im,” Brock said, swinging his legs off the bridge and taking a huge bite.

Sasha’s mouth tightened. She didn’t look at him. “Right. ’cos _that’s_ gone over well for us in the past.”

Brock hummed, his voice neutral. “Don’t worry. I’ll spin ’im a good story.”

Sasha’s shoulders hunched around her ears. “Put all the blame on yourself, you mean, instead of tellin’ Barret it was my fault.”

“Weren’t your fault.”

“Was so.” If she’d been quicker, if she’d only been just a _tiny_ bit quicker…

She saw Brock glance at her out of the corner of her eye, but didn’t look at him. “Sasha…” he sighed.

“What if he did this on purpose?” she burst out. “Set us up just to see how we’d… to see if we’d lie about it. Wouldn’t be the first time, remember that thing a few months ago with the Whitechapels? He _knew_ , he set us up to fail an’ then we…. ’n if you lie about this then he’ll ask _me_ ’n I’ll—”

“Sasha, please,” he interrupted softly.

She pressed her lips together and looked down at her last bite of eel. She knew how sullen her voice was gonna sound and hated herself a little bit for it. “You don’t gotta protect me, y’know. I can look after myself.”

Brock swiveled fully to look at her. She couldn’t quite meet his eye. He had a smear of mustard at one corner of his mouth. “I know that, Sasha. ’Course I know that. Gods know you’ve taken the fall for screwups that were my fault a dozen times. But… I meant… just ’cos you _can_ take punishment doesn’t mean you should _have_ to, right?”

“’n you think the thought of him doin’ anythin’ to _you_ makes me feel better?” she challenged. Brock must’ve forgotten she knew firsthand what Barret was capable of. Only certain rooms of the manor were soundproof, and it was its own special kind of hell to have to listen to someone else in pain that was supposed to be hers.

Brock shrugged, smiling unhappily, a skill they’d both mastered very young. “I’m older than you, s’what I’m for.”

 _That_ got her hackles up. She’d sputtered out a few syllables of protest when he raised his hands. “Sorry, just a joke, not a good time. ’m sorry. I only meant, you and me, we look after each other, right?”

Sasha narrowed her eyes. But Brock waited until she muttered “yeah” before he continued. His face didn’t wear honesty naturally, but it was there now.

“I promise, however I end up spinnin’ this, I won’t put all the blame on either one of us. When it comes to it, we both just gotta take what lumps we earned. Sound fair?” He wiped his mustardy hand on his jacket and held it out to shake.

Sasha considered for a bit. Cracked a tiny smile. “Not one bit.” And shook.

She’d been braced for the contact this time, so it wasn’t too bad. He was warm, his hand engulfing hers. It was as sincere a handshake as people like them were capable of, and yet she was still surprised to not find a coin or key or bit of paper passed between them at the end of it.

“Mind you, if Barret finds out, we’re both in for it,” she said.

“Ehhh, we’d be in for it either way.”

He smiled at her, carefully _not_ companionably bumping her shoulder with his own. She appreciated the effort.

So little about him was careless. You couldn’t afford to be, in Other London, so his every action was deliberate, his presence steadying and immovable.

She never knew how _there_ he was until he… wasn’t. He was gone, and took with him the only good thing in Sasha’s life.

—

“Oh, Sasha… are you sure you want to do this, my dear? I mean, there might still be unexplored avenues, I’m not a chemist, you know, of course it’s possible I might not have looked everywhere… there could be a compound, a solvent—this still seems so _drastic_ —something other than resorting to—”

“No, I—I want to do this.” Deep breath in, short exhale. “I need to.”

Mr. Gusset’s wrinkled hand closed over her own, comically tiny in comparison to hers, which she held pressed tightly flat to the table to keep it from trembling. Barret’s hateful ring, the plain brass revealing nothing of its true nature, sat mockingly on her fourth finger.

Her right hand white-knuckle gripped a dagger. Also to keep it from trembling.

The gnome flashed her a tight smile, squeezing her fingers before he leaped off his stool, rushing around and gathering supplies. “Right, well, I know we’ve already cleaned them both as well as we could, but I have some extra alcohol here in case you want to disinfect your hand and perhaps the dagger again… you know, _afterwards_ —and the bandages are right here too, of course… the furnace is stoked up hot enough for melting…. what else, what else? Oh yes, I got you a healing potion too, since you’ve said you’d rather not have to explain yourself to one of the cults--I know you said you didn’t need one and I shouldn’t waste the money, but honestly, Sasha, there’s no need for you to be in pain, not if there was something I could do about it—”

Sasha cut him off, her throat getting dangerously tight. “Ah, thanks, Mr. Gusset. Really, the only thing I’m proper worried about is relearnin’ all my coin tricks.” She failed to keep the shake out of her laugh.

No matter how much older she got, she’d gotten no better at lying. Mr. Gusset’s huge moustache twitched, and Sasha knew she hadn’t fooled him.

“I know, my dear. I know,” he said, for once, brief.

Mr. Gusset was chock full of casual touches, something Sasha’d struggled to get used to at first. The tiny gnome would tap at her legs if he needed her attention and she was focused elsewhere. If she was tinkering with something, he’d lay his hands over hers to point out mechanisms and components, bending his head down right beside hers. He’d pull her around by the hand, as enthusiastic as a child, if he wanted to show her something new he’d acquired, or give her shoulder a squeeze while walking behind her while she was hunched over the workbench.

Every day, a hundred times over, he kept her aware that she did, in fact, exist in the world, as a thing that could be touched.

She… she wasn’t sure how to feel about it. It’d taken a while before she’d stopped flinching every time, a struggle to convince herself he didn’t mean her harm. Her skin had even stopped prickling when he did it, but it left behind something that almost felt worse. Almost like… hunger? But not like actual stomach hunger. It was almost like, he’d let her know she was missing something she hadn’t ever realized she was missing, and now that she had it, now that he inflicted little kindnesses on her every day, she was afraid she’d never be able to go without ever again.

Sometimes it seemed like Mr. Gusset cared about her beyond her usefulness. But Sasha tried not to think about that. She’d thought that before, and it’d always turned out to not be true.

Mr. Gusset, with surprising wiry strength, pulled her down and wrapped his arms around her, squeezing her in a hug that belied his size. Sasha was startled, but not enough that she tried to pull away. She even remembered to let go of the dagger before wrapping her arm around him and patting his back.

“Ooh, I’m proud of you, Sasha. And I know it doesn’t matter what I think, obviously, but I’m glad you have the opportunity to make this choice for yourself, no matter how hard a choice it is.”

For a second, she let herself bury her face in his shoulder, curling her fingers into the back of his shirt. The hug sang over her skin, the space inside her chest going all weird and warm, her definitely-not-nervous trembling subsiding.

She pulled away quickly, clearing her throat awkwardly and wiping some dampness off her face with her own shoulder.

“Right,” she muttered, curling all the fingers on her left hand—except one—inward. Gods, she was so ready to tell Barret that no matter if she was still afraid of him, he didn’t own her anymore.

Mr. Gusset smiled at her and set his hands on her shoulders.

Sasha tightened her grip on the dagger.

—

Zolf looked like a drowned rat, and that was putting it politely.

Sasha was sure she didn’t look any better. Probably significantly worse, to be honest. Her clothes were drenched, heavy and plastered to her skin, and rain streamed down her face and glued her fringe to her forehead. The disc of magic hummed faintly beneath her, felt more than heard, as Zolf held tight to one side and kicked it back towards their little boat.

His yellow hair and beard were sodden deep gold, strands pulled loose from the braids and stuck all across his face. His sea-green eyes never stopped moving, flicking steadily from the stormy sky to the horizon back to Sasha’s face.

He’d jumped into the ocean—an expanse of water bigger than anything Sasha could’ve imagined before… which, well, it _was_ the domain of his god, maybe that afforded him extra protection or something, not that she could claim to know how it worked… but he’d jumped _into the ocean_ after her.

One minute she’d been perfectly fine, the next she was in the air, tossed head over heels and plunked into the ocean like a giant hand had decided to set her down there. It was by sheerest fluke they even found each other. Sasha supposed they had Poseidon to thank for that. The waves had nearly bashed them into one another, Zolf’s fingers had found her collar, she’d grabbed his arms, and they’d kept each other above the waves.

What with… _everything_ , the failed water-slick wave-tossed attempts to haul herself on top of the disc, Zolf doing what he could to help, hands icy cold but broad and solid—it wasn’t until after she was safe, flopped down on her belly, panting and marveling at still _somehow_ being alive that she realized what Zolf’s being there meant.

She had to believe it was just ’cause she was a part of the team. He thought she was worth something, worth jumping into the ocean for—and wasn’t that strange enough?—only because she was valuable to him as a tool, as a well-functioning and useful part of the company.

Later, on the beach, in the morning, there would be time for words. Now, there was finding Hamid, righting the boat, sailing through the other side of a hurricane. Now, Sasha thanked Zolf the best way she knew how. By making herself useful.

—

In some ways, she was glad she hadn’t been conscious… maybe hadn’t even been _alive_ … to feel the cold metal limbs pulling her apart, lifting her organs out of her body, and even if Zolf said he’d put her properly back together again, she’d never, ever know if that was true, if he’d done it right, even if she knew how things were supposed to be arranged… _inside_ , she couldn’t—she couldn’t _see_ it—

So yeah. Maybe a lucky thing. ’Cause if accidentally brushing hands with someone was enough to set her skin fizzing weirdly for an hour, she never wanted to know what a hand literally _on her actual heart_ might do to her.

It… it wasn’t Brock… she _knew_ it wasn’t. And yet… the most horrible thing about all this was some part of it felt like it might be. A part that still cared about her, that remembered her name, that _missed_ her, that gave her the nicest room she’d ever stayed in—the nicest room in the whole world, according to Hamid—just because he thought she’d enjoy it.

That week with Mr. Ceiling felt like it lasted forever. Not in a good way. But not… really in a bad way, either. They had conversations, she dredged up memories she’d long since thought dead and buried… and none of it was right. The impassive mechanical lenses always watching her weren’t his eyes, shrewd and sparking. The steel arms it extended weren’t his hands, slender and clever and able to wield dice and lockpicks and daggers with equal skill.

They were still underground. If Sasha closed her eyes, imagined the damp, the smell, imagined the steel girder she was dangling her legs off was their bridge, imagined the emotionless voice had any of his accent or inflections or emotions _at all_ …

Turned out, at the end of it, the only part of it that really mattered was the part that was still him.

—

Sasha liked a lot about Grizzop. Sure, he could be shouty, and his sense of right and wrong was a little too rigid for her taste, and he was a bit of a clingy drunk, _and_ he couldn’t cheat at cards to save his life… but he got stuff _done._

He was also overflowing with casual touch, in a different way than Sasha had known before. It often didn’t feel so much like affection as it was pushing to keep moving, get more done, move _faster_. And he healed with all the delicacy of a punch to the gut.

His affection was sorta impatient and abrupt, too, in a familiar way. Playful punches to her arm, nudges to her hip from his shoulder, shared glances whenever Hamid (or, more often, Bertie) was being an idiot. A lot of it was them pulling each other out of danger. Grizzop made very sure Sasha knew he had her back, and she responded in kind. He reminded her of Brock, in that way.

Then for the second time in a month, she nearly drowned, and this time it was Grizzop clinging to her, who wrapped his skinny arms and legs around her and held her back. She just wanted to grab her dagger, it was the coolest thing she’d owned probably _ever_ and it was useful and she liked it a lot and if she didn’t do something right now it might be _destroyed,_ what was so hard for him to understand about that?

The companionable, fresh-forest-air feel of his healing magic washed over her, and he—he was standing in the air at her eye-level, _that_ was weird—even when he backed off a little, when she’d punched the wall and resigned herself to losing her best weapon, he still kept his hands on her shoulders, fists clenched in her leather jacket, and then he was _shouting_ at her “You are more important than a _thing!”_ even though she’d been treated as a thing for most of her life.

And then he was crying, and said he was scared. For her. And that was the weirdest thing about the whole situation. So she walked away, to give them both some space.

And when he yanked the unscathed dagger out from beneath the door, polished off a smudge with his sleeve, and handed it back to her, she muttered “Alright,” more in acknowledgement than in thanks.

…

He was… so much smaller than he seemed, when she touched him for the last time. Shrunken, emptied of the spirit that had made him feel so big. He’d saved her. Actually died, rather than let her.

She’d seen the fall of Rome, the bloody, fiery death of thousands… tens of thousands… of people, and that was still the thing her shellshocked mind was having the most trouble with.

The wide and cruel and unfair world allowed them one moment of stillness. She held his tiny body to her chest. And whispered thanks.

—

“What happened this time?” Sasha asked, running a hand comfortingly across the back of Azus’s curly head as the boy sobbed into her robes.

“They was messin’ around durin’ manoeuvers, he fell off Wilde’s shoulders again. Brought ’im straight to you,” said Riz, who was leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed.

From outside the bedroom came Wilde’s voice, shrilly. “We were _not_ messing around! We were doin’ tumbling practice an’ he wouldn’t stop wriggling—”

Sasha didn’t roll her eyes, but thanked Riz with a nod and led Azus towards his cot. She took him by his shoulders and knelt down to his eye level. “Well, come on, lad, let’s have a look.”

Azus sniffled and nodded, tugging his robes up above his knees. Sasha pulled over a box, which held white cloth and a bottle of the cleanest alcohol she could purify.

“Oh, now, it ain’t as bad as all that,” she muttered, cleaning his scraped knees. Azus hissed in a breath when the alcohol hit him, but didn’t cry out. Sasha was proud.

“Jus’ a little blood, nothin’ to get worked up over, yeah? And it’s loads better than last time, when you fell off the roof? Remember that?”

Azus huffed a small laugh and nodded, scrubbing the back of his hand across his eyes. “Loads worse,” he said in a watery voice. “That one hurt for ages.”

“This one’ll only hurt for a little while, ’kay? Promise.” Sasha wrapped a short length of cloth around the scrape. “Gives you a story and a little bit of character. Maybe you’ll get a scar out of it.”

She grinned up at him, tying off the bandages. He grinned back at her, reaching out and gently laying his fingertips on the old burn scar down the side of her neck. “Like yours?” he asked with something like admiration.

“Yeah, you don’t want as many scars as I’ve got.” Sasha sat back on her heels, her knees starting to protest being on the stone floor. “Feel better?”

Azus sniffed one last time and nodded, hopping to his feet. He ran out of the room, brushing past Riz in the doorway, and shouted “Wilde! Ava says I’m gonna get a scar!”

Sasha stood, her knees and spine popping. She grunted, put a hand on her lower back, and sensed Riz come up behind her.

“All right, Boss?” he asked.

“All right, Riz?” she said, putting the supplies back into her cobbled-together medical kit. “Thanks for bringin’ ’im in. Besides that, how is tumbling going?”

“Better. You know how Azus and Wilde are, Boss.”

Sasha certainly did. Both were born troublemakers—well, really, all of them were—which made Sasha proud, but she also felt she probably deserved it. But at least _she_ knew how to raise a bunch of kids without hitting them. Her hands, still dexterous, now corrected forms, healed and bandaged, instructed in sleight-of-hand, juggled daggers to entertain. And if she _had_ to do violence—which was rarer, these days—it was in defence of the kids, not against them.

Riz waited quietly while Sasha put everything away. As far as she could tell, he was maybe twelve or thirteen, and growing quickly now for one who started out so small. He was calm and patient, pretty much the opposite of his namesake. He was also responsible, and brave, and cared very deeply about his friends. Sasha hoped Grizzop would be proud. She hoped all her friends would be proud.

She stood on the balcony, trying to massage away an unfortunately-recently-familiar stiffness in her hip and knee and wondering at the fact that she was old enough to feel stiffness at all.

In the yard below, Wilde tied back her mass of black curls and attempted Sasha’s favorite evasion roll. Bertus, walking around in a perfect handstand, shouted a valid correction to her form, and Wilde whirled on him and started arguing, and he argued back, still upside-down. Sagax threw knives unerringly at targets pinned to wooden posts. Amidus lounged beneath a cypress tree, reading a heavy scroll with a pile of more beside him—more of Cicero’s work, unless Sasha missed her guess. Azus, injuries forgotten, was trying too hard not to be seen as he crept up behind Amidus and attempted to nick one, and Amidus’s hand shot out and clamped around the little boy’s wrist, and he hollered and wriggled away, slippery as an eel.

One after another looked up, saw her, and immediately attempted to show off even more.

She put her arm around Riz’s shoulder, and he looped his arm around her back.

It’d taken these kids for Sasha to put the pieces together, to finally confirm the suspicions that’d been slowly sneaking up on her over the past few years.

Even with the irritations, with the problems, with their sullenness or irresponsibility or self-destructiveness, she loved them. She _loved_ these kids, not because of what they could do for her. Not because of how she could use them. But because they were _them_.

And she hoped, somewhere else in space and time, her friends knew she’d figured it out.

**Author's Note:**

> I just… I love Sasha so much, and so many times I wanted to shake her and yell “you’re worth more than your usefulness!” at her.  
> Thanks for reading!  
> (Also I think you should know the working title of this fic was “Everytime We Touch” so I’ve had that song stuck in my head for many days, and now maybe you do too. You’re welcome!)  
> I'm @screaming-introvertedly over on Tumblr, please come say hi! (someday I will learn how to link)


End file.
